I’ve taken my notebook with me on this four-day trip to Bosnia. A visit to a country that I have been wanting to see for years is finally happening, as I take part in the group visit organised by a local charity that aims to enhance cross-cultural and interreligious dialogue and engagement – a worthy cause in today’s much-fraught and inconsistent world.
My trusted notebook and pen will remain by my side. At the end of the trip, I will put all my Bosnian diaries on my website as a permanent reminder, and for others to peruse.
So here we are. Evening one, on a plane to Sarajevo, having taken a three-and-a-half-hour train from New Street and arrived at Stansted Airport, where I have joined 13 other pilgrims, variously scattered across the plane, sitting amidst many South Asian- and Arab-origin-looking people, with plenty of hijabis and bearded men, all arguably looking for something meaningful to emerge from their trips.
I have always wanted to visit for various reasons. The first is that, in the early 1990s, I watched on the television news as war engulfed the people of this part of the world, breaking up the former Yugoslavia into nations forged by religion and ethnic identity.
Bosnia today was firmly part of the Ottoman Empire, which had a presence in this territory for 400 years before territorial losses as a result of independence movements which, conceivably, resulted in centralised Ottoman administration giving way to autonomous international states with local law, culture, and tradition.
This happened largely as a result of the weakening of the Ottomans and the rising power of the Europeans forging ahead with a nation-building project through wealth, commerce, identity, and increasing military, air, and naval power. The Ottomans had little choice but to yield, becoming what was described as ‘the sick man of Europe’ from the late 1860s onwards.
Yugoslavia was formed soon afterwards, becoming a socialist system from 1948 to 1990 or so under Tito, who had his own system, separate from the Soviets but close enough to remain aligned.
It was the breakup of Yugoslavia after the fall of the Soviet Empire, at the end of the Cold War, that eventually led to Bosnia and Herzegovina emerging, but not until after a bloody struggle that killed 100,000 people and displaced more than two million.
It was during this War of Independence from 1992 to 1995 that we witnessed the siege of Sarajevo, the destruction of the Mostar Bridge, and the genocide in Srebrenica, which killed over 8,000 Bosnian men in a matter of a few days at the hands of the Serb army.
Today, 75% of Bosnia and Herzegovina is Bosniak, descendants of the Ottomans and mainly Sunni Hanafi Muslims; about 20% are Croats, who are essentially Catholics; and the remainder are Serbs, who are closest to the Orthodox Eastern Roman Empire. There are also Jewish communities, as well as non-religious people and religious others.
My objective over the next few days is to visit these places and learn a little more about what happened, why, and what it all means for Bosnians and Bosnia and Herzegovina today.
The extermination of Muslims by Christians at the fringes of old Europe is not an accident of history. It occurred at the borders of Europe and Islam, as the former Ottoman lands adopted socialist ideals before copying the dominant Western nation-state model, in a country with a Muslim majority but with Muslims paying the price for their freedom. At the time, I was an early student of Islamophobia, and the events in the Balkans in the early 1990s shaped my initial understanding of the concept, but, crucially, through its application. This was, of course, before 9/11 and all that followed it, and the reality of what is globalised Islamophobia today.
So, tonight, we will go to our rooms close to the airport, and I will offer some further thoughts and observations. But now I’ve set in motion what will carry me through the next few days, and I will diligently report back on all that unfolds during my first trip to Bosnia. I have visited Slovenia and North Macedonia, but Bosnia and Herzegovina lies firmly in between and at the centre of the Balkan lands. It remains fascinating to me, as I watched on screens the scenes of fighting, destruction, and suffering of the early 1990s, and all that came with it and from it.
***
The morning after the restless night before is never pleasant, but I managed to get up early, ate a protein-rich breakfast, got some local cash out, and am now ready to begin the first day.
One thing that struck me as I arrived at the hotel last night was the smell of stale smoke in the air everywhere, and elderly couples, with ladies in their hijabs and men with protruding bellies, sitting casually, sipping tea, staring into the distance, and exchanging the occasional choice word or two.
It reminded me of Turkey, the closest I’ve been to the country in ten years, such has been the nature of my exile from that country, having escaped the coup events in 2016 by a few days, never yet to return or even make it through. Twice I was ordered back – admittedly, one time because my passport didn’t have six months left on it to allow me to travel to Azerbaijan.
But that was a few years ago, and last night was a few hours ago, and now I have taken a few more sips of my Bosnian coffee, which is laced with cardamom, much like Syrian coffee but a little less concentrated. Delicious. Refreshing.
I have a few minutes left before I regroup with the team and the first real day of the trip can begin.
***
I’m on my way to Srebrenica, with still an hour to go before we arrive at our destination. Over the last two days, there have been a number of visits to various places, and while I have not been able to document everything until now, I will try to do my best on this bouncy, rocky, winding journey, which has made many in the group more than a little queasy. But as I try, it is clear that it is almost impossible to write on this page. Perhaps I can pick this up later.
***
I didn’t get any time to write up my thoughts and observations properly because it was impossible to do so on an incredibly bumpy drive across the country, with day visits to Mostar, Srebrenica, and Tuzla taking their toll on my ability to keep this pen on paper. But here I am writing after the fact and hopefully remembering all I can in terms of all of the key observations and insights I can provide.
This is what we went to see. First, the tunnel, carved out by minors under the UN airfield, was used to transport people and goods, including cigars and cigarettes, across 800 metres through a four-foot-six-inch narrow gap. The latter were used as currency at a time when the city of Sarajevo was held under siege for over 1,400 days.
During the siege, 10,000 people died, with up to 15 people shot, wounded, or killed daily by snipers posted on the hills all around, many of whom came as part of a safari hunt to target Bosnians for sport.
The tunnel offered a close look at what had to be done to support the 30,000 inhabitants of the city who tried to go about their business – in schools, as taxi drivers, and as children in orphanages – as the bullets reigned in.
A later visit to the Siege of Sarajevo Museum highlighted stories written by young people recalling their childhoods and told of the harrowing realities of daily life: how they survived with next to nothing but their will to live.
The view from the tops of the hills surrounding the city made it all too clear how a sniper went about shooting, turning the city into a killing zone, a bloody theatre of murder and mayhem.
Sarajevo seen from the surrounding hills – the elevated landscape that shaped both the city’s beauty and the brutal realities of the siege.
A walk back to the centre of the city, in particular to the old city, still echoed the magic of old, but the main square and its Ottoman mosques were surrounded by boutique stores, coffeehouses, and eateries of Bosnian and Turkish flavour, with the inevitable array of tourist traps awaiting visiting spenders.
Sarajevo, the city under siege and the city of the 1984 Olympics, was also the site of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which kick-started the First World War between older but fading European powers.
There is no shortage of history in this great city of the ages.
Mostar’s reconstructed Old Bridge, a powerful symbol of connection, stands amid continuing social and political divisions.
One of our trips took us to Mostar, where, infamously, the famous mediaeval bridge over the river, bringing together Muslims on one side and Christians on the other, was destroyed by Croats who switched sides after initially aligning with the Bosnians against the Serbs who initally attacked and started the war.
The locals rebuilt the bridge, first erected by a student of the well-known architect of the Blue Mosque, the Süleymaniye, and other World Heritage sites, Mimar Sinan.
The rebuilding of the bridge is seen as local communities overcoming hate, intolerance, war, and difference, and forging new alliances after the war ended in 1995. As would be revealed later, this amounted more to symbolism and, arguably, political deeds than to an actual coming together of faiths and cultures.
Mostar tries to attract tourists to step across this marvellous edifice to humanity, but does so for visitors oblivious to the obvious and clear ongoing tensions between ethnic groups that live apart, go to school apart, and often work apart.
Politics remains fractured along ethnic, religious, and class lines, and cooperation remains limited in an air of conflict, real, perceived, or imagined.
A million Bosnians have left this country of what was four million, taking with them human and physical capital into diasporic settlements across the world, where there is arguably greater rebuilding and reconciliation than within Bosnian territory itself.
Mostar’s bridge brings together tourists from regional countries and Western Europe more notably, as well as those from Muslim minority communities in these nations and Muslim-majority, richer Gulf Arab nations.
But the Bosnian people remain divided, entrenched in the view that they must uphold the protection and sustenance of their own ethno-religious tribes in case it happens all over again, and when this happens, nothing good can happen.
Between fight or flight, there is freeze. The reality dictates, whether by chance or design, that most Bosnians are in a state of freeze.
***
Dinner in the evening was hosted by a Bosnian family who told us of their fears for the future and their stories of how they coped during the war when they were children. Their faith gives them solace in the face of residual trauma, but their children are discouraged from engaging with Serbian families. Their faith in a heaven that awaits the believer is juxtaposed by the fact they are fully armed and ready if another conflict erupts in the immediate future. This time, they say, they will be prepared.
***
The road to Srebrenica was long and winding, but we made it.
The sign outside the former Dutch Battalion headquarters at Srebrenica identifies the genocide as a failure of the international community
The tour of the UN compound provided exhibitions and stories from the victims showing that the international community thoroughly failed the Bosnians. Mistakes were made by all, not just by the UN Dutch peacekeeping forces, but also by others at the UN.
The Serbs tricked and connived their way into the territory, trapping more than 15,000 Bosnians who had been led to believe that the UN would protect them in a designated safe zone.
Of these, 8,273 didn’t make it out, gunned down over eight days by advancing Serb forces and buried in graves, 300 at a time. Mostly men and boys were killed, while women and girls were raped at will.
Rows of white memorial stones at Srebrenica bear witness to the thousands of lives taken during the genocide
The tombstones of everybody who has been identified stand as clear evidence of a genocide on European soil, fifty years after it was said that genocide would never happen again.
The testimonies from local Srebrenicans attest to how they were treated with disdain by the Dutch, who were young, poorly trained, and fundamentally ill-equipped for their jobs. They celebrated the end of their tour with elaborate parties, while Bosnians in the camp fed on scraps or starved.
When it was all too clear that the Serbs were running the show, the Bosnians elected to walk 100 kilometres through the forest to get to a neutral zone. It was during this walk that many were captured, with the men shot while the women were violated.
Footage of those who made it struck me with horror. They said, “We can’t tell you what happened. It’s too horrible to mention.” They were barely functioning human beings: emaciated, exhausted, traumatised, dead on the inside, and just about living on the outside.
Watching a video of them as they came out of the forest hit me the most, as I recalled these images from when I first saw them in 1995. But I now know in full what they endured.
At the time, journalists and reporters spoke of the likely possibility of atrocities, but ‘we do not yet know the scale’. This brought a sharp intake of breath, and the tears that were welling up inside finally fell from my eyes.
Inside the exhibition hall, installed in a former battery factory, I was filled with incredible rage at the depravity of humankind, but also at the catastrophic failures of the UN to do anything about it at the time.
The perpetrators behind this genocide were eventually tried in The Hague by the ICC, but it took over two decades for that to happen.
Shoes displayed in the exhibition evoke the long and perilous journey through the forest undertaken by those attempting to escape.
The displays of the shoes worn by those who walked through the forest brought home the suffering they must have endured, but also the sheer doggedness to get to the other side. For those who could not make it and never returned, their remains continue to be found in the woodlands stretching across the breadth of north-east Bosnia.
We had some time, so we went to the town of Srebrenica. It had a population of 36,000 before the war; today, it has nearly 10,000.
From a vantage point, the town sat between a winding valley, and empty houses rested next to each other in what had become a ghost town. There is almost no one left in the town. No one came back. No one could even begin to try.
Looking down over Srebrenica from the hillside, the town appears quiet and still, carrying the weight of a history that remains impossible to ignore.
Many who survived the war ended up in Europe and North America as refugees, and they have made their new homes and rebuilt their lives as best they can.
Srebrenica is a mass burial site, a former UN compound containing exhibition halls, and the town itself: empty, still, and silent.
Never again, they said. Never again…
***
I’m on the plane to Gatwick as I close off this entry, and this is likely the end of this travelogue.
What I saw on television from 1992 to 1995, and what I read in IR and sociology books, came alive, but at the expense of the dead. Many will have already made this journey and seen it for themselves; many will do so over time. And who knows, I may get a chance to visit again.
But I came away from this trip not full of hope or any kind of optimism, not just for the people of Bosnia and its population of three million, but for humanity itself.
In the post-Cold War era in which we find ourselves, there is a line that separates the East from the West, and that line runs through Bosnia. Croats and Serbs are aligned in what many say is a civilisational defence of Western Christendom, mostly imagined or perceived, while Bosnians, always referred to as Muslims, are seen find comfort in their faith as a form of identity protection, fully aware of the global Islamic influences from the Far East to the Middle East.
Among the 45 million Muslim minorities who have made Western Europe, chiefly old Europe, their new homes over four generations or more, it is Bosnian Muslims, like the remaining Muslims in Russia and in Eastern and Middle Europe, who are the indigenous European Muslims, having made Europe their home since the 13th century, when the dervishes first arrived and established the tekkes.
This is why we need to keep a close eye on this axis of civilisations at a time when Muslim lives simply don’t matter. But matter they do, and matter they must, lest the Western disease of Islamophobia, which reflects Orientalism, othering, and racism, afflicts us all and wrestles away what is left of flailing humanity.